Proto-Indo-European Religion
(PIER) is the study and reconstruction of the religion of the
Indo-European-speaking people. Standard methods of historical linguistics can be
used for the reconstruction of common words and their meanings in the various Indo-European languages. This allows for a reconstruction of the Gods and Goddesses
and some of the rituals, myths and poetry used by the linguistic ancestors of
this group of speakers. While archaeology offers information about material
culture, linguistic analysis offers insight into the intangible aspects of human
culture, including religion, views about the organization of the natural world,
beliefs about supernatural beings, processes and objects, and emotional
concerns.

Efforts have been made to identify the cultures that have been reconstructed
based on linguistic analysis with particular archaeological cultures, but this
has not been possible in many cases and has not yet led to an identification of
the “Indo-European homeland” although for many years that has been an important
topic. A major cause of this failure has been the political, national and
religious agendas which have perverted genuine scholarship.

Proto-Indo-European Religion should not be confused with Neopaganism.
Neopaganism is an umbrella word that is used to refer to a great variety of
Pagan, polytheistic or nature religions, generally in Western Europe and in
English-speaking countries worldwide. These religions are often the creative
production of particular individuals or are based on popular social trends, most
notably cultural romanticism, mysticism and theosophy in the late 1800’s and
early 1900’s. Some are overtly racist especially in northern Europe, while
others reinvigorate a real or imagined cultural heritage of mainly
English-speaking people in the US, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. Goddess
religion is also of this type. Generally, such groups are not interested in
maintaining standards of scholarly or historical accuracy, since these are
religions and as such they appeal to and provide for the personal needs and
interests of individuals, something which the monotheistic religions have
conspicuously failed to do.

Proto-Indo-European religion is based on the scholarly study of older
religions and only a few groups of people have tried to celebrate the actual
rituals and customs as was done in the past. Of course, in India no scholarship
or reconstruction is necessary--Indians continue to maintain their ancient
religion as they have always done.

Trends in Past Research

There are
about 15 schools of thought relevant to Proto-Indo-European religion; just four
are addressed here.

Nature Theory and Christian Theology Many early
students of comparative Indo-European religion observed the common elements such
as the deification of forces of nature, including the Sun and saw a shared
vision among different groups of people which showed the common experience of
humanity. Christian theology teaches that all people have or will recognize the
obvious superiority of the Christian god(s). Max Müller and many others made the
argument that all of the early Indo-Europeans recognized a sun god that could be
identified with the Christian god who was born at the winter solstice and then
died and was revived at the spring equinox, among many common elements of Pagan
and monotheistic religions. But while Christians at first saw this as proof that
“even heathens recognize the primacy of the One (Christian) god” it soon became
clear to everyone that the reverse is equally true: even Christianity recognizes
the primacy of the Sun God, and is based on Pagan religion. Retreating from this
embarrassing reality, many scholars today display hostility to any Nature Theory
of Indo-European religion, although it is usually presented as an ad hominem
attack directed at Max Müller.
#cathfascCatholic Fascism, and the Trifunctional Theory of DumézilTrifunctionalism is the theory that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) society was
divided into three classes of people, the priests who had the right to make
decisions, the warrior class who had the right and responsibility to enforce the
decisions, and the producer class which had no ability or right to make
decisions and was required to obey and to produce food and articles and, in the
case of all women, children. Thomas Aquinas is credited with the clearest
presentation of these ideas which were formulated in opposition to ideas about
human dignity that were developing in Europe in the 1200’s (see his De
Regimine Principum “On the Governance of Rulers”). Despite the Protestant
Reformation, these views have continued to be supported by the Catholic Church
and they became very popular in Italy between the wars, through the Italian
fascist party led by Mussolini. Dumézil argued that the Gods and rituals of PIE
religion can be reconstructed to show just such a tripartite division,
apparently in an effort to support not only fascism as a political goal, but
also to support control of the state by the Catholic Church. In fact there is no
evidence that the Proto-Indo-Europeans had any such organization and even
Dumézil has admitted that he cannot find any. Trifunctionalism in one form or
another is still the standard model in Indo-European studies including
publications by Émile Benveniste, J.P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams, and Jaan
Puhvel, although it is hard to believe that any of these people would actually
subscribe to Catholic Fascism.

There is a short discussion on the Cybalist list about some of the issues with Catholic fascism as a theory in Indo-European religion. You might like to take a look at Message 68005 with a response in Message 68008, another response in Message 68010 and finally Message 68080.

Comparative Mythology A more recent “scientific” theory
argues that all people have the same psychology which is in some way intrinsic
to humanity and that this psychology corresponds to Jungian theories on human
nature. This has led to bizarre and obsessive publications that attempt to show
that there is a general human desire to be the “hero who kills the dragon and
gets the girl” as exemplified by writers like Joseph Campbell. While extremely
offensive to just about everyone, including women who don’t want to be the prize
in someone else’s fantasy, and to people everywhere who don’t like to see their
sacred stories mangled to prove someone else’s weird ideas about the human mind,
this approach is still very popular in academia.

Be warned:Genetic Studies which are supposed to map
out the history of human migration are completely irrelevant to the history of
the Indo-European-speaking peoples since the topic is language group not genetic
group which often have no connection to each other. Anyone of any genetic group
can learn any language and multilingualism is the norm for most people. The vast
majority of arguments about genetics which are being flipped around on the
internet and some that are published in journals are pseudo-scientific
gibberish.

Modern Scholarly Standards

The scholarly approach to Proto-Indo-European religion requires the examination of
the forms of words with their phonological component and their semantic
component at the same time. Such an analysis makes it possible to reconstruct a
history of the development of the Indo-European religion including the precise
pattern of cognate and borrowed elements (see the Grimm's Law Chart for a very brief explanation of the concept). While this includes an element of
comparative religion, it is balanced and checked by the linguistic analysis
which is precise and objective. It makes it possible, at least in some cases, to
determine exactly which Gods, rituals and myths are native cognate forms in a
particular language, and which ones are borrowed from one language to another,
which direction the borrowing took and at least a relative chronology about when
the borrowing happened. Without this precise linguistic analysis, most of what
passes for “comparative religion” is just a glass bead game.

Current FindingsProto-Indo-European religion can indeed
be reconstructed with great confidence and a very widespread application across
the Indo-European world. Among the elements of Proto-Indo-European religion that
can be reconstructed are the Gods and Goddesses; the myths, the festivals, and
the rituals with invocations, prayers and songs of praise that make up the
spoken element of the religion. Much of this activity is connected to the
natural and agricultural year, or at least those are the easiest elements to
reconstruct because nature doesn’t change and farmers are the most conservative
members of society and are best able to keep the old ways.

Goddesses: There are at least 40 deities that can be reconstructed to the
Proto-Indo-European religion. Gender is not a fixed characteristic of
Proto-Indo-European Gods and Goddesses, since they are often deified forces of
nature which do not have gender. The Indo-Europeans have always known this, but
it seems to have deeply confused western scholars who have been trapped in
sexist and patriarchal ways of thinking. Among the Goddesses reconstructed so
far are: *Pria, *Pleto, *Devi, *Perkunos, *Aeusos
and *Yama.

Myths: There are at least 28 myths
that can be reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European. Some of these have been known
for years and are described in early popular books like George Cox’s The
Mythology of the Aryan Nations. These have since been confirmed by
additional research, including some in areas which were not accessible to the
early writers, such as Latvian folk songs and Hittite hieroglyphic tablets. One
of the most widely recognized myths of the Indo-Europeans is the myth in which
*Yama is killed by his brother *Manu and the world is made from his body. Some
of the forms of this myth in various Indo-European languages are given in this
article about the Creation Myth of the Indo-Europeans.

Rituals: The rituals of the Indo-Europeans can be reconstructed
including the standard form of invocation and offering and poetic phrases that
appear in the songs of praise. The most widespread ritual of the Indo-Europeans
is a food offering in which the people thanked their deities for the food they
had by offering a little bit of it to them symbolically. This process had the
wider social value of sharing food within the household, community and state and
is the basis of Indo-European community religion. It is clearly based on a
food-sharing culture which developed before the invention of money. This same
ritual is still the most typical form of offering in India where it is called a
puja. The most typical food offered at a puja, and one which is distinctly
Indo-European, is a dairy product: milk, butter, ghee and yoghurt in India,
milk, cheesecake and similar products in Greece and Rome (olive oil is often
substituted) and cheese and butter in northern Europe. Fruit, grain and bread
products are also offered. Water, milk and alcoholic drinks are especially
poured in memory of the dead and as an offering to water sources such as rivers.

Calendar: It is not yet possible to reconstruct the
Indo-European calendar since it has been adapted to local conditions and
environment, however some festivals have been reconstructed at least to
continuous areas, such as the northern countries or the Mediterranean region.
Many of the festivals of the agricultural year can be reconstructed, and their
assignment to particular deities is consistent across the Indo-European-speaking
world.

The Proto-Indo-European Religion is a beautiful religion stretching back 6000
years at least and offering a round of customs and traditions and a standard of
behavior and morals that represent an ancient memory of the right way to do
things and the best standards for human aspirations. The myths and songs of
praise, recorded as poetry from the oldest sources, notated musically in more
recent times and still sung in India are among the finest treasures of the human
species. The early thinkers among Indo-Europeans such as the Greek philosophers
and the Vendantists continue to provide the clearest written guide to those who
want to explore the relationship between ourselves and the world around us,
natural, human and celestial.

• Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch by Julius Pokorny, Francke Verlag, Bern und Munchen, 1959 (there is also a 1989 edition).
There is a version of Pokorny available on archive.org, in 3 volumes. This is one of the standard texts used by linguists to study the Indo-European languages. It is usually referred to as either Pokorny or IEW.
Volume 1begins page 1, A. with the first entry *ā, Ausruf der Empfindung, oft neugeschaffen.
and ends on page 348 with the last entry *eu̯egʷh- “feierlich, ruhmend, prahlend sprechen” etc.
Volume 2 begins on page 349 with G, Gy, with first entry *ǵăb- “schauen, ausschauen nach”??
ends on page 770 with the last entry *nu(long/short) ‘nun’ und ähnliche Formen; nu-no “jetzig”
Volume 3 begins on page 771, Ṇ and first entry *ndhos, ndheri “unter” [under]
ends on page 1183 with last entry *u̯rughi̯o “Roggen, Emmerkorn” [rye]

A version of this article was originally posted on Wikipedia but it was repeatedly vandalized by religious bigots. The page was published at pierce.yolasite.com/pierintro but Yola was hacked in Nov. 2011 and they could not salvage their servers. It is now published here with many revisions based on continuing research.